Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
With this Idomeneus began dragging him by the foot through the
thick of the fight, but Asius came up to protect the body, on foot, in
front of his horses which his esquire drove so close behind him that
he could feel their ‘breath upon his shoulder. He was longing to
strike down Idomeneus, but ere he could do so Idomeneus smote
him with his spear in the throat under the chin, and the bronze
point went clean through it. He fell as an oak, or poplar, or pine
which shipwrights have felled for ship’s timber upon the
mountains with whetted axes- even thus did he lie full length in
front of his chariot and horses, grinding his teeth and clutching at
the bloodstained just. His charioteer was struck with panic and did
not dare turn his horses round and escape: thereupon Antilochus
hit him in the middle of his body with a spear; his cuirass of bronze
did not protect him, and the spear stuck in his belly. He fell
gasping from his chariot and Antilochus great Nestor’s son, drove
his horses from the Trojans to the Achaeans.
Deiphobus then came close up to Idomeneus to avenge Asius, and
took aim at him with a spear, but Idomeneus was on the look-out
and avoided it, for he was covered by the round shield he always
bore- a shield of oxhide and bronze with two arm-rods on the
inside. He crouched under cover of this, and the spear flew over
him, but the shield rang out as the spear grazed it, and the weapon
sped not in vain from the strong hand of Deiphobus, for it struck
Hypsenor son of Hippasus, shepherd of his people, in the liver
under the midriff, and his limbs failed beneath him. Deiphobus
vaunted over him and cried with a loud voice saying, “Of a truth
Asius has not fallen unavenied; he will be glad even while passing
into the house of Hades, strong warden of the gate, that I have sent
some one to escort him.”
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